This post is also available in: Japanese
Muji Europe Holdings, the UK based parent company with 55 retail outlets in Finland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Denmark, Ireland and Poland, has filed for administration. It is using the UK “pre pack” administration often favoured by retailers, whereby the sale of the business has been agreed before the administrator is formally appointed.
It is therefore expected that the stores will continue to operate and the staff will continue to be employed.
Muji has said “this is part of a planned strategic restructuring of the business and Muji’s management expect to conclude a deal shortly.” Muji or rather its parent company Ryohin Keikaku had been rumoured to be considering moving the European headquarters to Germany in 2018 because of Brexit. It now has a bonded warehouse in the Netherlands and its warehousing and logistics base is within the EU. We wonder therefore whether this is not just a process for shutting down the UK HQ and setting up a new one in the EU.
Muji Europe Holdings had 168 employees in the UK in 2015/6 and now has only 31. Ryohin Keikaku Europe, also based in the UK, has 143 employees.
As the correspondent for the Toyo Keizai business magazine puts it “there is no need to take it so seriously…its influence in Europe and the United States is limited, and the company has shifted to expanding its sales channels to East Asia”. It has 494 stores in Asia, where recent store openings have been concentrated. The US operations went into bankruptcy in 2020. Ryohin Keikaku’s profit has been declining, so clearly some measures need to be taken. In the Japanese domestic market, these measures have mainly been around opening in more rural areas, often as a concession inside supermarkets, and becoming more locally rooted in terms of the product line up.
Update – Ryohin Keikaku board meeting of April 8th decided that:
“In order to develop our European business in the future, we have decided to liquidate Muji Europe Holdings to eliminate the debts and credits between the parent and subsidiary, and transfer the business to our wholly owned subsidiary, MUJI Europe Limited (UK, hereinafter “MEL”). The company decided to inherit the company and continue the business of its European companies. In conjunction with this reorganization, the company plans to implement structural reforms, including the withdrawal of unprofitable stores and review of its cost structure, in order to improve profits and strengthen its financial base.”
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